In Syria, the fighting is over, but a resource-rich region is left in limbo

HIRRI, Syria — Mohammad Khalawi explains the devastation of Syria’s Deir al-Zour province through the scars left by the many conquerors who passed through during 13 years of civil war.

It was here in this resource-rich eastern province that Khalawi saw rebels oust loyalists of Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2012, before being supplanted by jihadi fighters, who in turn were soon kicked out by Islamic State militants.

It was here that Islamic State entrenched itself, transforming Deir al-Zour into a oil-and-gas fiefdom to fund the extremist group’s caliphate, before two rivals — the Syrian government, backed by Russian airstrikes and militias creted by Iran, and a Kurdish-led militia with U.S. support — waged offensives in 2019 to defeat the group, also known as ISIS.

And it was here, the day before Assad’s ouster in December, that Khalawi watched thousands of soldiers and pro-Iran fighters flee into Iraq and cede their positions to Kurdish militiamen; a few days later, the Kurds, too, left.

“Everyone passed through this place,” Khalawi said. “These groups weren’t here to work for us. They were here to loot and steal everything they could.”

Each new power painted over its predecessors’ propaganda posters and insignia, leaving the province’s buildings a palimpsest of the war’s winners and losers.

In Hirri, a tiny village nestled between the Euphrates River and the border with Iraq, Khalawi pointed to the faded outline of an Islamic State logo on the wall. Near it was a banner that said “Death to Israel” — an artifact from when an Iranian-backed militia controlled his neighborhood. Painted beside that was the red-white-black tricolor of the Assad-era government and a defaced poster of Assad.

Khalawi, an accountant with the Hirri municipality, is now witnessing yet another makeover, this time by the Islamist rebels who ousted Assad late last year. In the almost two months since assuming power, the new government, led by the Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir al Sham, has been busy putting its own mark on the province, reclaiming outposts and militia headquarters, refurbishing infrastructure and painting it over with the rebel group’s symbols.

Khalawi is optimistic — so far. Like many here, he viewed Assad’s fall as the harbinger of a new beginning for Syria — and the fraught Deir al-Zour province.

Though war has subsided in much of the country, Deir al-Zour, which is bisected by the Euphrates, remains a hostage to competing ambitions.

Areas east of the river — where much of the province’s oil and water resources lie — are controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, a Kurdish-dominated administration supported by the U.S.

Territory west of the river is in the new government’s hands. And somewhere in the province’s desert shadowlands, Islamic State sleeper cells await their chance.

The U.S. has a 2,000-strong troop presence in the area, which it says is solely to counter a possible Islamic State resurgence and protect SDF-run prisons and camps holding thousands of ISIS loyalists. But the SDF has used its partnership with Washington to construct a proto-state in Syria’s northeast and refuses to dissolve itself despite Damascus’ new government.

That has irked Turkey, which supported the rebels now controlling Syria. Turkey considers the SDF to be an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which it labels a terrorist group. Turkey has threatened to launch an offensive to destroy the group.

Syria’s fledgling leadership must navigate this maze. It needs the U.S. to lift sanctions on Syria as it attempts to revitalize the northeast’s oil and agriculture riches.

“We have enough of our people in SDF areas that we don’t even need bullets to take them. But the Americans are there, and we can’t get into a confrontation with them,” said Abu Humam Al-Deyri, who heads security at the border crossing.

Al-Deyri, who gave his nom du guerre to protect his family from reprisals, is one of many Hayat Tahrir al Sham commanders who can’t return to his village in Deir al-Zour because it remains under SDF control. He considered the SDF little better than the Assad government, with a Kurdish minority imposing its rule and ideology on Arab-majority areas.

“My joy in expelling Assad won’t be complete till my village is liberated from the SDF,” he said.

So far, officials in the interim government have pushed for a peaceful approach. In an interview with Syrian television this week, interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa said negotiations with the SDF were underway, adding that “disagreements remain.”

A resolution is sorely needed in Deir al-Zour. In the provincial capital, entire neighborhoods have been laid to waste. Electricity comes on for less than an hour every six hours, a result of war damage to generators, but also because the SDF controls the gas fields and has refused to supply more power.

Water shortages are frequent. Residents, many of whom have returned to homes that are little more than rubble heaps, are desperate for opportunities.

“I was a computer studies teacher. Now we’re back to the days of carrier pigeons,” said Mahmoud Al-Ali, a 35-year-old repairing a blown-out wall in a shop. “We’re so tired. We can’t go through more war.”

Beside him was Ahmad Al-Ali, a 20-year-old nursing student who was now moonlighting in construction to help pay expenses for his wife and two kids, as well as his parents.

“I can do this kind work because I’m young. But my parents are teachers and there are no schools to return to. What will they do?” he said.

There are fears that any fighting between the SDF and the government would see ISIS take advantage of the security vacuum. Though the extremist group is much diminished, it maintains some 5,000 fighters, analysts say, and could target prisons and camps to release detainees who U.S. military officials have described as an “ISIS army-in-waiting.”

“The idea of a clear-cut handover of prisons during an offensive by Turkey or the government, that’s an impossibility,” said Mohammed Saleh al-Ftayeh, a political researcher from Deir al-Zour. “The moment the SDF sees troops crossing the Euphrates, it’ll open the cell doors and let the Turks or whoever deal with it.”

For its part, Turkey says that it has already begun preliminary talks with regional governments to fight Islamic State, and that the new Syrian government would take responsibility for ISIS prisoners. All that would allow the U.S. to cut ties with the SDF, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Sunday at a news conference in Doha, Qatar.

“We hope that President Trump will make the right decision and right this wrong,” he said.

Khalawi was dismissive.

“The regime, the Iranians, the Russians, the Kurds, the coalition — every side that came here used Islamic State as their excuse,” he said. “It’s all a charade.”